The British and Abortion: 40 Years Later -- Part Two of Two

As we talked about Tuesday, Great Britain’s Channel 4 stirred up the hornet’s nest when it ran a riveting, no-holds-barred look at abortion. Its “Dispatches” segment--“Abortion: What We Need to Know”--aired October 17. Britain commemorates the 40th anniversary of the enactment of the 1967 Abortion Law this month.

What made the program so controversial? Let me count the ways. First, an abortion clinic allowed Dispatches reporters to film abortions.

Viewers saw Dr. John Spencer, an emotional refrigerator, perform an abortion on a 16-year-old girl. Some perspective: According to the Guardian newspaper, there were 55,000 abortions “in the first full year of the [abortion] bill coming into force.” Today there are roughly 200,000 abortions performed each year, nearly a four-fold increase.
Ten percent take the lives of babies older than 12 weeks. The blonde teenager’s baby aborted by Spencer was nearly 16 weeks old.

Technically, abortion is legal “only” through the 24th week (there is plenty of wiggle room that allows abortionists to kill much older babies), and Spencer is one of the “handful” who will ply his trade up to the legal limit. The East London abortion clinic--Marie Stopes, where Spencer is the senior clinical director--would not allow Dispatches to film the bodily remains of unborn babies, both young and old, an omission reporter Deborah Davies overcame with film provided by Americans.

But my guess is that as gruesome and nauseating as the pictures were, the longer-term impact may come from Spencer, droning on about which pieces of the baby are “too large to come out intact.”

To illustrate, “Dr Spencer grips his thumb between the surgical forceps and squeezes gently,” Davies explains in the voice-over. Then Spencer, speaking in his passionless, matter of fact tone, says, "Those parts are the skull and then the spine and pelvis, and in fact they are crushed..."

“Abortion: What We Need to Know” highlighted what is by now an open secret: there is enough queasiness about abortion that the number of physicians willing to participate is dropping. This uneasiness extends to a few prominent abortionists who want the upper limit rolled back to 20 weeks or 16 weeks for abortions performed for “social reasons.” (The bitter irony is that the commemoration of the Abortion Act has provided the Abortion Establishment with the chance it has long sought: to amend the law to make it even easier for women to have “early” abortions, thus cranking up the number of dead babies.)

“But the debate goes beyond distaste for the procedure or the personal ethics of individual doctors,” Davies says. “There are two key scientific issues that could shape the forthcoming parliamentary debate--“the incredibly emotive topic of fetal pain” and fetal viability.

Dispatches does an excellent job laying out the physiological reasons why unborn babies no older (and perhaps younger) than 20 weeks can experience pain. This is hugely significant, since when the earliest point was thought to be 28 weeks or 26 weeks, everyone could assuage their consciences: abortion was legal “only” through week 24.

Likewise on the issue of fetal viability. The juncture at which the child can live outside her mother’s womb was supposed to a part of the legal calculus. For example, with younger and younger preemies able to survive, even Justice O’Connor, early on in her stint on the Supreme Court, conceded [in Akron], that “the Roe framework, then, is clearly on a collision course with itself.”

Or, as Trevor Stammers, a pro-life doctor, told Davies in more down-to-earth terms, “I think it's totally barbaric that a 24-week foetus will be aborted on one floor of a hospital and in the intensive care unit they'll be trying to save the life of another one."
As I mentioned yesterday, there is a short 8 minute, 15 second excerpt online [http://youtube.com/watch?v=rP6o4BIZMt0] . And you can read about most of the major points made in the documentary by perusing Deborah Davies excellent piece In the Daily Mail. [www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=487377&in_page_id=1879&ICO=FEMAIL&ICL=TOPART]

What happens in Great Britain is very important, both to them and to us. Be sure to read up on what promises to be a titanic struggle in Parliament.

Please send your comments and questions to Dave Andrusko at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Part One